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This is our shame.

Early this Friday morning in Manhattan, New York, a man and his wife jumped from the ninth floor of an office building near Park Avenue. They each had a suicide note in their pocket. The woman’s note told authorities that their children were inside and to please take care of them. The man’s note held an explanation of the grizzly scene a young woman discoveredd on her way to work.

He told of the wonderful life he and his family had enjoyed, their financial downfall and the medical issues he and his wife could not afford to treat. They could not afford healthcare.

It could be summed up that they could not afford to try to stay alive, so they took their own lives.

Chronic health problems can cause depression, which would not help matters. And if a person cannot afford the treatment for their illness, they certainly cannot afford treatment for the depression is can cause.

This should not be happening in this country. No one should have to be that distressed over healthcare. EVER. The ACA was better than before, but it is not enough. Too many are still left out, and with Trump’s actions and promises to encourage its failure should Republicans not pass a non-healthcare bill, more and more people are getting caught in the loophole of making too much and not enough at the same time.

We need single payer. Now. Yesterday. Single Payer yesterday would have saved these two lives.

People should never feel they have no options, like their lives are already forfeit because they can’t afford healthcare needs. This is tragic on so many levels because there was no help.

This is our shame. Shame on us for demanding everything they have to just not die. Their children have to live with this all their lives, and the knowledge of why. Because, for all our talk of freedom, for all our boasting of how wonderful and great our nation is, we can’t or won’t provide the most basic human right to our citizens: The right to live. We commercialized illness. We turned relief from suffering and sickness into a commodity. We have an entire industry reveling in profits from the suffering of our own citizens.

Billions of dollars in PROFITS off your diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, COPD, HIV, and cancer, just to name a few. What possible inspiration is there for a cure? And when they do have a cure, what does it cost? Ask someone with Hepatitis C.

We should be ashamed. This is our collective failure. We already have a system that works, that keeps healthcare professionals and faciltiies as private practices and organizations, meaning they would not be governement employees. We already have reimbursement schedules and filing systems. There is no reason we cannot make the transition to Medicare for all, except the wealthiest who won’t be able to profit off of it don’t want this and have convinced foolish people that it is wrong, un-American and socialist. And we are already paying for it. If insurance companies are raking in billions in profits (and they are), that means we, the people, are already paying billions more than the costs of healthcare in our nation. We are more than paying for it. We are paying enough to ensure every person in our country has access to healthcare, but instead of that money going to the services needed for our people, it is lining the pockets of the rich. They get richer and richer off of our misery, off of our illness, off of our fear to die.